


Lost Voices

by trickydeepforest



Category: Glee
Genre: AU, First Meetings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 08:12:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8790238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trickydeepforest/pseuds/trickydeepforest
Summary: Kurt’s living a shell of a life in NYC, cursed to be constantly surrounded by restless ghosts.  Since he can’t do the things he actually wants to do, he starts to deliver messages from the afterlife.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have a love/hate relationship with signing up for challenges, because I never finish stories if I don't have a deadline but due to poor time management skills I'm always desperately trying to finish right at the end. This time I knew it was all worth it when I saw [Riverance's](http://riverance.tumblr.com/) and [goldenslumbr's](http://goldenslumbr.tumblr.com/) amazing art. So gorgeous, thank you both so much.
> 
> And thanks to my awesome beta [fearlessly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fearlessly/pseuds/fearlessly), who has the quickest turnaround time even when I send her the final 75% of the story two days before it's due.
> 
> Those of you who watch Supernatural may catch a couple of small ideas that I borrowed.
> 
> Warnings for brief violence, a mention of suicide contemplation, depression, a non-religious take on the afterlife, and past character deaths (OCs and canon)

[](http://s266.photobucket.com/user/sarie1210/media/Lost%20Voices_zpsaoywidtv.jpg.html)

Kurt Hummel stops in front of apartment #31, an anxious ghost hovering over his shoulder. He takes a deep breath, smooths out his shirt, squares his shoulders, and knocks on the door. 

“There was a cat,” he mutters under his breath, right before the door opens.

The young woman, probably in her late twenties, looks at him suspiciously. It’s ironic (and annoying), how everything he wants to be doing with his life would be easier in New York than back home in the mid-west, but the one thing he’s stuck doing is much harder in this city than it would be in Ohio: getting people to open their door and listen to a stranger.

“Hello there, are you Margaret?” He doesn’t really wait for her to confirm it, as the ghost has already done that for him. “First of all, I just want to assure you that I’m not asking for any money or any personal information from you, and that I will not be contacting you again. I have a message for you from your father.”

Margaret’s face changes to full on anger. “My father is dead.”

“Yes, I know. He needs you to know that he’s sorry. He missed so much of your life because he was working, and he wishes that he’d done things differently. He loved you and didn’t realize how quickly time was passing.”

Margaret’s anger hasn’t budged an inch. “A lot of good that does me now,” she says, and slams the door in his face.

As Kurt turns around and leaves, the ghost stays there, outside the apartment door, sobbing, even as he fades out of sight. 

Kurt’s feet are heavy with the swell of regret. Not for the ghost’s problems (he’s not the first workaholic negligent parent who’s tried to make amends after it was too late) but for his own disappearing act. It’s been almost eighteen months since he’s seen his dad, and he honestly can’t guess when that’s going to change. 

While he has a few minutes of peace, he pulls out his cell phone. He knows his dad will be at work now so he can leave a voicemail at the house. The only way to stop his dad from flying out to the city to hunt him down was to agree to let his dad hear from him every few days. Kurt would only agree if they added the stipulation that they communicate through texts and voicemails. It’s not a compromise Burt accepted easily, but Kurt had not only inherited his father’s stubbornness, he had perfected it.

“Hey, Dad, just checking in. I wanted to tell you that I love you and I wish I could see you. I know you don’t understand why I can’t, but I promise as soon as things change I’ll let you know. I’m safe, I’m healthy and the weather here is perfect for my favorite scarves. I’ll call again soon.”

He’s not sure how much longer he can hold his dad off, or how much longer he can sound like he believes anything is ever going to change.

The next day is more of the same. Kurt passes museums he’s never visited, theaters housing off-Broadway shows he’s never heard of, and parks he might have cut through at some point but has no memory of. He keeps his eyes straight ahead, too busy trying to discern the living from the dead to internally admire or mock passing pedestrians’ fashion choices. His earphones are blasting music, because it’s the only way to drown out the talking of the deceased who hover all around him.

His life in New York is nothing like he hoped it would be.

He arrives at another run-down apartment building and absentmindedly starts pressing buttons until someone buzzes the front door open for him. Sometimes he waits outside for hours, catching his unsuspecting victims as they leave for work or an evening out, but in general he likes to do this when they’re at home. Originally it was because he thought privacy was better, and if the message was emotionally upsetting (before he started doing this he would have assumed they all were) he wanted to give them the courtesy of being in their own home to recover. Now it’s because the quicker he can deliver his message, the sooner he can get home and have some peace. 

After he’s buzzed in, he climbs the stairs to the fourth floor, finds the correct apartment and knocks. “There was a cat,” he mutters under his breath. It’s another middle-aged widower, another message of regret and unexpressed love and too little, too late. This guy takes the words stoically; Kurt’s not 100% sure that he believes Kurt is legit, but he doesn't ask for any confirming details only his late wife would know. Kurt doesn’t offer, either. He would have, at one point.

As he turns to leave, his job done for now, all he’s really feeling is relief, as that particular ghost had a really annoying voice, which is something he tries not to think about anyone, given his own personal experiences with the insult.

He leaves his headphones off for the ten minutes it takes for the dead to start talking again ( _please I need him to know tell her I’m sorry tell them I didn’t mean it you need to help me please_ ), then cranks the music back up and tries to get home before the rain starts.

\--

One day bleeds into the next. He closes the door to his apartment, using his hip to budge it the last little bit so the lock will catch, sets his heavy shoulder bag of library books on the floor, and picks up the chalk they keep in a bowl next to the entrance. He carefully traces over the protective sigil drawn there while reciting the necessary words, even though he knows Santana would have done the same thing when she left for work a few hours ago. He’s taking no chances that the warding could fail. His apartment is the only place he gets more than a moment of peace. 

He puts the books on the coffee table, and heads to their tiny kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. He’ll need the caffeine if he’s going to spend more than half an hour wading through those thick, obscure tomes. Despite sleeping at least ten hours a night, he always feels tired nowadays. Santana says it’s because he’s sleeping too much, but Kurt thinks that he’s just not sleeping well. He wakes up feeling stressed out and exhausted, like he’s been running from something, his mind filled with half remembered images and emotions.

He spends a few minutes letting his mind go blank while he sips his coffee, staring straight ahead at the wall, not paying attention to the apparitions that flicker in and out of sight in his kitchen, usually going through the motions of cooking or eating. There’s also a glowering shadow of a man who stands in the corner by the window, but he’s never moved much from his spot, so Kurt just doesn’t let his eyes wander that way.

With a sigh, he picks up the top book and starts to read, now able to skim for any potentially important information at a rate that would have been very useful back when he was in school. They had ordered this book from the library in Chicago, and it had taken weeks to arrive. Santana has high hopes for it, but Kurt doesn’t share her anticipation. He has gotten his hopes up too many times already, and tries not to do it anymore. The highs and lows of hope and disappointment are too much for him.

He falls asleep on the couch and wakes up to find Santana sitting in the armchair, the long-awaited book closed on her lap.

“I’ll take it back to the library tomorrow,” she says quietly.

\--

_Before Santana, things were bad. A level of bad he would not have believed existed. Sometimes he would find himself laughing humorlessly as he remembered his miserable high school years, the loneliness, the bullies, the abject misery, and how he used to comfort himself with the “it gets better” message that was offered as a hopeful lifeline to gay teens everywhere. It was hard, some days near impossible, but he chose to believe it, dreamed a rewarding future for himself, and worked his ass off towards making it happen._

_God, he’d had it so easy then._

_He’d never truly grasped how important that message was: “It gets better.” Not until he could no longer believe it was a possibility for himself._

_When he was in high school, there were two things keeping him from ending it all: his dad and his vision for his own future. Later, after he’d lost any possibility of the future he’d hoped for, it was his dad, and the fear that he’d become one of the ghosts that refused to move on, just like the hundreds he saw every time he opened his eyes._

_That in itself was a special kind of torture. While he had never been actively suicidal in high school, the idea of it was strangely comforting, and helped him deal with some of his anxiety. He could face the next day, because if it got worse, he could always end things, and not have to deal with them anymore._

_That safety net was gone. He was miserable alive, and feared he would be miserable dead. What else was there?_

_He toyed with the idea of drugs, something completely mind numbing to break him from reality. The illegal ones seemed like a lot of effort, and he was rather positive he could get himself committed. Everything about him screamed psychotic break, and he wasn’t a hundred percent sure that wasn’t the truth of things anyway. But all that would do was delay the inevitable. He would just be stuck in limbo, waiting longer for the death he was not in a hurry to get to._

\--

His Thursday morning ghost is different than his usual ones in a few ways. He’s not sure how he ever noticed her amongst the cacophony of all the louder, angrier or more desperate spirits trying to get his attention. She’s fairly quiet, and calm, which makes him want to help her if at all possible, especially since she seems to be requesting his help, rather than demanding it.

She also doesn’t speak any English. He doesn’t seem to be haunted by very many foreigners, and he wonders if other cultures have better ways to deal with their restless spirits.

She leads him to Central Park and he finds himself approaching a dark haired boy sitting on a bench by himself, reading a textbook. Kurt stops in front of him and clears his throat. The boy looks up and Kurt’s pre-planned speech dies in his throat.

The boy is actually a young man, and he has absolutely gorgeous eyes.

The observation throws him off for a few precious seconds, and the young man (Blaine, the ghost has informed him) smiles questioningly at him. 

The smile does not help Kurt get back on track. He’s spent the last year viciously suppressing all thoughts of the life he wishes he was able to live, including appreciating cute guys. He doesn’t really need the pain of that loss rearing it’s overwhelming head again.

“Hi there. Are you Blaine Anderson?”

“Yes! May I ask how you know that?” His eyes seem to be filled with curiosity, which is a very welcome change from the usual suspicion he’s met with.

“I have a message for you, from your _lola_.” He speaks over the confusion filling Blaine’s expression. “Let me just assure you that I’m not asking for any money from you, or any private information, I’m just here to pass along the message and then I’ll never contact you again.” And for the first time he feels a twinge of regret saying that, a fleeting sense of an alternate universe where this meeting could be a starting point.

[ ](http://s266.photobucket.com/user/sarie1210/media/IMG_20161208_181657_zpsas01ilij.jpg.html)

“You… have a message for me from my dead grandmother?” Kurt can hear the disbelief, and possibly a little bit of hope, though he knows that might just be wishful thinking on his part. Communicating with the dead is not unheard of, but the few true mediums of the world are pretty much monopolized by the rich and powerful. They don’t just walk up to people on the streets and offer their services. And for every real medium there’s about a thousand fake ones, but their goal is always payment.

“I apologize for how awkward this might sound. I don’t speak her language. So-” He cuts himself off as something else occurs to him. “You do though, right? I’m not just going to be spouting indecipherable nonsense to you? Not that the language is nonsense of course, but - “

Blaine is starting to smile at him now, though his brows are still drawn in confusion. “It’s ok, I know what you mean. And yes, I speak Tagalog.”

“Ok, good. Um, one more warning. I usually don’t deliver mean or really bitter messages, but like I said, I don’t speak the language, so I’m kind of basing this off of how nice your grandma seems, that she’s not saying something rude or spiteful to you. But if I’m wrong, and you don’t want to hear what she’s telling you, just tell me to stop, ok? It might take a second to get my attention, because I kind of zone out, but I’ll stop if you want me to.”

“Okay…” Blaine says, rather bemusedly, and Kurt starts painstakingly repeating the words, one by one, as the ghost tells them to him. It’s only a few seconds before Blaine interrupts.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think this is working. You just said ‘there was a cat’.”

Kurt literally facepalms, and feels how hot his cheeks are. “No, that was right. That was your grandma making fun of me, a little. It’s… a long story.” He starts again, and realizes pretty quickly that this is going to be a long, long process as he painstakingly repeats the ghost’s every syllable. This apparently is not a quick ‘just wanted to say I love you’.

A few minutes later, Blaine gets his attention again and begins to translate his grandmother’s words. “My grandmother says that if you can trust her, she can show you how to do this faster.”

Kurt is taken aback. None of the other ghosts have ever asked him to trust them before, and frankly, he probably wouldn’t have. He’s not sure whether he should believe his gut instincts that this tiny, elderly (dead) woman wouldn’t hurt him. “Do you think I should? Was your grandmother a good person?”

Blaine’s smile is one of wistful affection. “She was one of the best people I have ever known. If she says that it’ll be ok, then I think you can trust her.”

“Ok. What do I have to do?”

“She said that if you agreed, you just need to put your hand over your heart, close your eyes, take a deep breath in, let it out and don’t fight it.”

Fight what? Kurt thinks, as he follows the instructions, and then suddenly he’s a passenger in his own mind, as someone else starts talking through his mouth.

He should be terrified, he knows, but this weird limbo he finds himself in is almost peaceful, and he can’t quite connect to his emotions anyway. Instead he uses the opportunity to watch Blaine, studying his bright eyes and beautiful smile, even admiring his classic style of dress.

Blaine is listening to his grandma intently, asking the occasional question in the same language his grandmother is using. His eyes also roam over Kurt, probably trying to reconcile his grandmother’s presence in a young man’s body.

Kurt isn’t sure how long the whole thing takes and he kind of zones out. He starts to really pay attention again when Blaine stands up, moving close to Kurt. Suddenly he’s speaking English and Kurt pulls himself together enough to listen.

“Kurt, my grandmother says thank you, and that she’s sorry about the after effects.” And suddenly, Kurt is again alone in his own body, and it feels like all of his energy and strength go with her. He sags, and would have crumpled to the ground, but Blaine is ready for it, and catches him. 

“She said that I would need to help you get home so that you can sleep. Can you tell me your address?”

Kurt barely has enough energy to move his mouth, or force his voice out, but finally whispers what Blaine asked for. 

Luckily they’re not that far from the edge of the park, and Blaine is able to help him into a cab without too much effort. Kurt is not a particularly large man, but Blaine is smaller than he is and practically carrying Kurt around wouldn’t have been easy.

Kurt grays out during the cab ride, coming back to himself when Blaine tries to get him out of the cab. The grace period of delivering a message is over, and Kurt is once again bombarded with the faces and voices of desperate, restless spirits. He tries to make himself a little more useful than just dead weight, but he’s not really sure that he succeeds. Either way, they do eventually make it to the door of Kurt’s building, and with an apology that Kurt can just make out, Blaine reaches into Kurt’s pants pocket to get his keys. 

The trip up the three flights is something that Kurt is glad to have almost no memory of. He’s sure he would never get over the embarrassment. He fleetingly wonders if Blaine thinks that being able to converse with his dead grandma was worth all this trouble, as Blaine helps him hold himself against the wall while Blaine works the key in the door to his apartment. 

Once they stumble inside, Kurt lets himself sink to the ground. He tries to get the words “close the door” out of his mouth, and either he succeeds or Blaine just does it anyway, because the voices assailing Kurt’s ears are cut off suddenly, and Kurt wants to sob with relief. For once the complete exhaustion works in his favor; he’d prefer to make it through this humiliating encounter without openly crying, if at all possible. At this point, it seems a low bar to set, but he gave up on lofty goals a while ago.

“Let me help you to your bed,” Blaine says quietly, and although Kurt would like to insist that he can do it himself, it would be a very obvious lie, so he lets Blaine hoist him back to his feet, and together they make it the last few feet to Kurt’s bedroom. Once he’s finally horizontal, tucked into his bed, Kurt finds himself blinking up at Blaine's concerned face. He wishes he could memorize it.

“It was nice to meet you, Kurt,” Blaine says quietly, as Kurt’s eyelids give in to the gravity of his exhaustion.

 

\--

_The first ghost he helped was a wailing woman that showed up about a month after it all started. Every time he took his headphones off she was practically sobbing into his ear, “Please help me, please help me, you have to tell her, please.”_

_Finally, at the end of his patience, and nearly his sanity, he had turned to her and snapped. “What? What do I have to tell her?” It was the first time he had spoken to the ghosts, except for begging and screaming for them to leave him alone, which he gave up on after the first two weeks._

_The woman had finally stopped wailing and gave him a tremulous smile. “You have to tell my daughter that I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”_

_It took a little while, but he finally got the full story from her, how a heated argument and poorly chosen words had led her daughter to wonder for the last ten years if her mother’s fatal car crash was intentional. A daughter who lived in the city._

_Kurt debated sending a letter, or a possible a phone call, but ultimately decided it would be best to try to do it in person._

\--

When Kurt finally wakes up, it’s dark outside. He turns his head to look at his alarm clock and sees that it’s almost 7:30. He’s been asleep for almost six hours. A noise out in the living room has him forcing himself out of bed to investigate. 

It’s Santana, washing dishes in the kitchen. “Aren’t you working tonight? I thought you picked up a late shift,” Kurt says, as he shuffles his way to the couch. He’s starving, but he needs to muster up the energy to do something about that.

Santana’s face seems a little too happy to see him, and Kurt frowns suspiciously before she says “That was last night. You’ve been asleep for about thirty hours, Rip Van Twinkle.”

As Kurt gapes at her, she picks up her phone and texts someone. “How are you feeling?”

Kurt takes a moment to take stock, the details of his afternoon encounter coming back to him. “I think I’m ok, just a little tired and about ready to eat my own arm.”

“Well, don’t. I don’t think you want to commit yourself to the asymmetrical look for the rest of your life, and dinner will be here in about half an hour.”

“Ok… and since you’re not hounding me for details, I’m going to assume you know something about what happened to me yesterday. Did Blaine leave a note? Did we have a conversation while I was sleeping?”

“Blaine, huh? You know what, we can go over everything while we eat. Why don’t you take a banana or something to tide you over and go take a shower. I’m going to make you stay awake for at least a few hours tonight, you may as well be comfortable.”

Kurt knows something is up now, but he lacks the energy needed to enter into battle with Santana. He already has a fight on his hands if he’s going to not fall asleep in the shower.

\--

Kurt’s arms feel like wet noodles again by the time he’s finished blow drying his hair. Santana will doubtlessly (and ceaselessly) make fun of him for “getting dolled up” just to sit around the apartment for the night, but Kurt always feels more himself when he’s put together. It feels even more necessary than usual after the experience of being possessed (for lack of a better term). While it wasn’t unpleasant while it was happening, and now that Kurt has some distance from it, he feels a little unnerved.

When he shuts the hairdryer off he knows he won’t have to wait long to find out what Santana is up to; there is more than just her voice coming from the living room. And since it’s not another female, he knows it’s not just another instance of Santana picking up the delivery girl. 

Kurt walks out of the bathroom to find Santana scooping take out pasta into bowls along with- “Blaine? What are you doing here?” Kurt stops outside the bathroom door in confusion. He thought he’d never see Blaine again. It’s been a sad thought in the back of his mind since he woke up, the newest in a towering mountain of depressing regrets that is his life.

“Hi Kurt.” Blaine stops taking cartons of food out of brown paper bags long enough to give Kurt a cute, dorky little wave. “I brought you dinner. My grandma told me that you’d be both exhausted and starving, so I asked Santana to text me when you woke up.” He looks at their small kitchen table, which is practically groaning under the weight of the amount of food on it. “I hope I brought enough.”

“Did your grandmother say that I was going to develop a black hole in my stomach? This is more food than I normally eat in a week, Blaine, thank you.” Blaine’s earlier statement catches up with Kurt’s confused brain. “Wait, you asked Santana…?”

“I couldn’t just leave you alone yesterday, not when it was my fault you were like that, so I waited until she got home.”

“Thank God,” Santana interjects, “since I would’ve had no idea what the hell was wrong with you this time.”

“But if you talked to Santana, you could’ve just told her that I would need to eat when I woke up.” Kurt feels like his brain just can’t catch up with this whole situation. Of all the weird crap that he’s run into delivering his messages, why is having one of the recipients meeting Santana the one that blows his mind?

Blaine blushes a little, and wrings his hands briefly. “I wanted to do this for you. Getting to talk to my grandmother again will be life changing for me, I suspect. And I wanted to get to talk to you again.”

Kurt tries to read between the lines. “Blaine, I can’t get in touch with your grandma again. Once I deliver the message, they’re gone for good, as far as I know.”

Now it’s Blaine that looks confused. “I know. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Well, we can talk and eat, I guess.” Kurt gestures towards the table.

“It's all right if I join you?”

“No Blaine, I want all forty servings for myself,” Kurt says dryly.

“Well boys,” Santana says with an obnoxious level of cheer, “I already ate, so I'll leave you to it. Kurt, I'm glad you're conscious. Blaine, you're a giant step up from all the dead guys Kurt has been dating, and I mean that even beyond the ironic height joke.”

Kurt waited until the door closed behind her before responding. “Ok, two things you should know: one, almost everything that Santana says can be taken offensively, and two, I am not a necrophile.”

Blaine just blinks at him, his hand frozen in the air with a serving spoon full of pasta.

“Just to be clear,” Kurt says lamely.

\--

Once they finish their first servings and start picking at their food at a more leisurely pace, Blaine starts the talking part of their evening.

“So. Your name is Kurt, you live in New York City and you deliver messages from ghosts...that you don't sleep with. Have I got my facts straight so far?”

“Wow, it's like you know me. My turn. Your name is Blaine and you're a detective? Or a stalker.”

“I’m a stalker? You’re the one who apparently hunted me down in the middle of Central Park,” Blaine says good naturedly, then blinks at the new thought. “How did you do that by the way? My grandma died before I moved here, it’s not like she’d know my schedule. Do you actually stalk? Or have supernatural Google skills?”

Kurt waves that theory off. “Nothing so elaborate. Whichever ghost I’m currently working with kind of tugs me in the right direction. It’s sort of a gut feeling. I mean, sometimes they just flat out tell me the address, if they know where the person lives, but they still have an invisible tie to the actual person.”

“The ghost you’re working with? Is it like an episode of Ghost Whisperer? Do they approach you and ask for help?”

Kurt gives a humorless laugh. “I wish. More like I’m on the floor of the New York stock exchange 24/7 except everyone is yelling at *me* and half of them are sobbing.” He looks back down at his food, carefully selecting his next bite. When Blaine doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, Kurt looks back up to see Blaine frowning at him.

“They’re not here right now. Santana warded the apartment.” He makes a vague gesture at the symbols on the inside of their door. “That keeps out the majority of them. But anytime I leave, yeah. The only time they leave me alone is when I’m actively delivering a message for another ghost, and then for about ten minutes after. I don’t know why. Some kind of ghost etiquette.” He shrugs awkwardly. He’s never really tried to explain this all to someone who didn’t have some kind of experience with the supernatural world.

“So… how do you…?” Blaine is still frowning, and suddenly Kurt is tired of this topic. He lives it every minute of every day, and he doesn’t need Blaine’s pity.

“How do I what? Go to school, work, buy groceries, walk down the street? I had to drop out of school, work from here, and I pretty much never leave, unless I’m delivering a message. Can we talk about something else for a little while? I’m not in the mood to regale you with tales of my pathetic life”

“I’m sorry,” Blaine says quickly. “I don’t mean to pry. I’ve just never met anyone quite like you before.”

Kurt makes a ‘duh’ face at the obviousness of that sentence and Blaine gives a small laugh at himself.

“I know, I know, but I don’t just mean the haunted thing. I mean *you*, Kurt. I’d like to get to know you better.”

Kurt flounders for a minute. He hadn’t been expecting that. “Have a thing for the crazy ones, huh?”

Blaine laughs. “Not as a rule, no. I have to get going, I have a paper to write for class tomorrow morning, but I’d really like to see you again.”

Kurt stares at him a moment, trying to read him better. All he sees is earnestness. Blaine is either the most genuine person Kurt has ever met or a really good actor. Kurt isn’t ready to settle on a side yet.

“That would be nice,” he says finally. “Get your phone, and I’ll give you my number.”

After a number exchange, and a brief goodbye, Kurt is letting Blaine out of their apartment, a wave of dead voices practically smacking him in the face when he opens the door to let Blaine out. He recoils, so distracted by Blaine that he hadn’t braced himself for it like he normally does.

He feels a hand on his arm, and looks up to see Blaine’s mouth moving. Kurt can’t make out what he’s saying over all the others, but Blaine looks worried and confused, and then the ghostly faces are getting in between them, until Kurt can’t see anything else.

He closes his eyes, and says over the noise, probably too loudly, “It was nice to meet you Blaine. I have to close the door. Please.”

He keeps his eyes closed until the voices abruptly cut out, and he opens them to see the door is closed, and he’s alone in his apartment once again.

\--

_When the woman opened the door, and the ghost confirmed that it’s her daughter, Kurt was suddenly at a loss for words. The message that he’s supposed to deliver has been repeated over and over into his ear, nonstop for the last few hours, and he’s flustered and unsure. He didn’t know if he hopes the daughter will slam the door in his face right away or believe him and express gratitude. Mostly at this point, he just wanted this wailing, begging ghost to leave him alone and was desperately hoping that this would accomplish it._

_Finally he blurted out, “There was a cat.”_

_“I’m sorry?” the woman asked, wary and confused._

_Kurt took a deep breath and started again. “I have a message from your mother. She wants you to know that a cat ran in front of her car that night, and she swerved into that tree trying to avoid it. Yes, she was angry and upset, but she wants you to know that she didn’t do it on purpose, and she’d still be here with you if it was her choice.”_

_She just looked at him with her mouth open, obviously taken totally off guard._

_“Anyway, yeah, that’s her final message to you, so that you don’t have to feel guilty, or whatever. Now that you know, she can rest peacefully.” It’s said without confirmation, more wishful thinking than anything else, but as Kurt turns to walk away, he sees the mother’s spirit reaching out to her daughter, even as she fades to nothing._

_He heard the daughter call out, “Wait!”, but he had nothing else to give her, so he kept walking with the smallest sliver of hope in his chest._

\--

Santana gets home a few hours later and finds Kurt halfheartedly editing another story for the blog.

“The hobbit went home? I expected him to have more staying power than that! I was hoping to walk in on a scene I could describe to your kids in horrifying detail.”

Kurt pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. He tries really hard never to blow up at Santana, because even though she can be ridiculously tactless, he’d be screwed without her. That she might decide that he’s not worth all this trouble and leave is a daily fear.

“He had to go home and work on a paper. He’s a student.”

“So, quick and dirty then?” She leers at him, leaning her hip against the edge of the desk he’s working at.

“No, just eating and talking.”

“Well, he’s coming back soon, right? If you miss your chance to hit that ass, I’ll dig out some of my more imaginative curses to use on you,” Santana says with an affected pout.

“I’m pretty sure you’ll tank your karma completely if you intentionally curse me anymore than I already am. And I really don’t think he’s interested in me that way.” Kurt tries to sound dismissive, and edits another sentence.

“Of course he’s interested in you that way. He’s a young gay man-”

“How do you know he’s gay?” Kurt interrupts.

She shrugs. “Besides the outfits? I asked him during our coma-side chat.” She pats him on the shoulder. “Seriously, I already vetted him for you. He’s good to go, or in this case, do. I’ve told you a million times, those skinny jeans of yours would rope in all the boys you can handle if you'd just let them. What else do you think he came back for?”

It’s Kurt’s turn to shrug. “At first I figured that he thought I could talk to his grandmother again. Now I’m thinking maybe there’s another person he’s hoping I make contact with. Or he’s one of those people who are fascinated with the macabre, or maybe the insane.”

“Maybe he is, but he also wants to see you nekkid. Mark my words. If I were you I’d get him into bed as soon as possible. You need to get laid, like, ten years ago, and who knows how long he’ll stick around.” And with that last depressing observation, she kisses the top of his head and goes to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

About an hour later, after giving up on his distracted editing, Kurt lays in bed and thinks about what Santana suggested. He’s still not convinced that Blaine is attracted to him like that, but if he is…

Kurt doesn’t deny to himself that the rest of what Santana said is true. He would really, really like to get laid. And sure, he’d prefer to actually be in a relationship and have sex with someone he’s in love with, but there was an increasingly good chance that he would never have that opportunity. He’d never been tempted to have a one-night stand before, since he’d have to invite the guy to his apartment, and somehow that felt way too vulnerable. The apartment was his only safe place in the entire world, and he didn’t want to take any chances on compromising it.

But Blaine has already been here, and while Kurt still isn’t a hundred percent sure of his true intentions, he doesn’t make Kurt feel unsafe. So if Blaine is down for it, maybe Kurt _should_ take full advantage of this, before Blaine realizes…

Well. Before Blaine realizes that there isn’t anything interesting left to Kurt underneath this curse, and that he can do a lot better than a virtually homebound crazy person.

\-- 

Despite Santana’s assurance, Kurt is honestly surprised to receive a text from Blaine the next day. He knows he’s developed quite the fatalistic outlook on anything good ever happening to him again, but he didn’t think it was a huge reach to think that Blaine might be scared off by the display of Kurt’s inability to function just because his apartment door was open.

The text is waiting for him when he wakes up in the morning: “Are you going to be home tonight? I want to bring dinner over again if that’s alright.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Was there an autocorrect that I can’t see? ;) I said I *want* to :)” Kurt isn’t the least bit surprised that Blaine’s an enthusiastic emoji user.

“Yeah, I’ll be here all day today.”

“Great! What’s your favorite food?”

And so it continues, with Blaine texting questions throughout the day about Kurt’s likes and dislikes, mostly about food, though occasionally touching on other subjects. Santana wanders into his room while he’s picking at his editing job again, and picks up his phone, scrolling through the most recent texts.

“I thought we agreed that you were going to try to get horizontal with gel head?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, baby penguin, when two people think the other looks good enough to lick-”

Kurt smacks her stomach.

“All these one word answers to his texts. You’re coming across as annoyed and put upon. He seems like a sensitive little nougat, and he’s not going to continue to try to woo your pants off if you discourage him.”

Kurt takes his phone out of her hand and reads over the visible part of their conversation.

Blaine: Are you originally from NYC?

Kurt: Ohio

Blaine: Really? OMG, me too :O I grew up in Westerville.

Kurt: Lima

Blaine: We were so close to each other! How long have you been in the city?

Kurt: 538 days

Blaine: Wow, you keep better track then I do. My parents still live in Ohio. Do you have family there still?

Kurt: Yes

As Kurt is holding the phone another text comes through.

“Are you psychic?” he grumbles at Santana, and she snatches the phone back and reads the newest text out loud.

“‘I’m sorry, I’m bugging you, aren’t I? You don’t have to agree to have dinner with me just because I invited myself over.’ Ha! I told you. Stop being so curt, Kurt. Ooh! Ask your ghost buddies for their best pick-up lines!”

“Ok, go give someone else some of your life changing advice. Spread the love. I have to try to fix this.” He takes his phone back and goes into his room, throwing himself across the bed.

This thing with Blaine, whatever it turns out to be, isn’t going to even start if he can’t open himself up at least a little bit. As long as he keeps his expectations low, this relationship, no matter how short, can be a good thing rather than another source of pain.

“No, I’m sorry,” he texts. “My normal conversational skills have gotten kind of rusty. I would still like to see you tonight, if you’d like to come over.”

The reply comes a minute later: “Yay! 6:00?”

Kurt bites his lip before he hits send on his reply. “Sure. Just one question: is this still a thank you for your grandma or is this a date?”

“Kurt, I loved my grandma, but this is definitely a date.”

\--

_It’s Santana who comes up with the idea of the blog. There are too many ghosts who just want to be heard, who want the world to know their side of their life story, even if there’s no specific living person to tell it to. Kurt starts writing them down, even though it doesn’t appease any of the spirits enough to actually leave._

_“Start a blog. You can be like, HONY for the dead, but with fewer pictures. Some people even get paid for that kind of shit.”_

_After Kurt looked into that possibility, he determined that it was indeed feasible. He did not put any information about himself on it, didn’t mention the source of his information, didn’t try to fact check anything, just presented the stories exactly how they were told to him._

_Once he started to get readers, many of the older ghosts started to fade away after their stories were posted. Apparently, it didn’t matter how their audience was reached, they just wanted people to hear them._

\--

When Blaine arrives at the door he’s practically buried under boxes and bags.

“Are you moving in? And I thought lesbians moved fast.” Santana says as she takes the top box off of the stack in his arms and brings it to the kitchen table.

“Just because I can’t take Kurt out to a nice restaurant doesn’t mean that I can’t bring the New York City dining experience to him. Kurt, it’s nice to see you again. Could you possibly go into your room and not come out again for like, fifteen minutes?” Blaine gives Kurt a toothy, hopeful grin, and Kurt bemusedly turns around and goes back into his bedroom as Santana opens the box she’d carried and lets out a laugh.

“Come get me when you’re ready,” he says, shutting his door. He knows he won’t get anything productive done, so he lays on his bed and stares at the ceiling. He’s not tempted to peak, as pleasant surprises are an almost extinct event in his life, but his curiosity and anticipation leave him feeling fidgety even while motionless. He zones out for a bit, letting his mind drift and then is shocked back to awareness when someone (Blaine, he remembers) knocks on his door.

He gives himself a shake, gives his hair a quick check in the mirror, and opens the door.

Blaine is on the other side, and with a bright beaming smile, grabs Kurt’s hand and pulls him to the table.

There’s music playing from a little speaker on the counter. Kurt looks around, and starts to wonder exactly how long he was in his bedroom for. There are fairy lights strung all over the ceiling, a new tablecloth and place settings, lit candles all over the room and a large bouquet of flowers in a vase as the centerpiece. Blaine pulls a chair out for Kurt and makes a gallant gesture for him to be seated.

“Blaine,” Kurt says, his eyes wide and still trying to take everything in. “You didn’t have to do all this. How on earth did you do all this?”

Blaine waves a dismissive hand. “Santana helped. Before she left,” he adds, as Kurt looks around for Blaine’s partner in crime.”

“That doesn’t really seem like something Santana would normally do. Do you have blackmail material on her already? Because while it seems easy to get, considering how many crazy things she does, it’s hard to use effectively, since she’s practically shameless.”

“No, she helped without asking, though she did cackle evilly a lot during the process. It was a bit unsettling, to be honest, but I was fighting some pretty tight time constraints. Oh, by the way, Santana said, and I quote ‘You’ll need photographic proof if you plan to win the bet.’”

Kurt feels himself turn bright red. “I’d say I’m going to kill her, but she’d probably be even more annoying dead. There is no bet. She’s just trying to embarrass me.”

“If you want I can lie and say it didn’t work if she asks,” Blaine offers.

“It’s fine,” Kurt waves it off. “I’m used to her.”

“She’s very…” Blaine trails off, probably trying to think of something diplomatic.

Kurt just nods. “Yeah. Santana is… a necessary evil.”

“You said last time that she warded the apartment?”

“Yeah. I met her while I was going to every psychic and magic shop that I could find, hoping someone would be able to help me break my curse. She was helping out at her grandmother’s shop. For some reason she took pity on me and decided to help me try to find a way to stop all this. She’s better at curses than she is helpful spells, surprise, surprise, but she figured out a ward for the apartment, and I got some relief for the first time in months.”

Blaine is staring at him wide eyed. “That must have been an awful time.”

Kurt looks up at Blaine’s concerned face and feels bad about being such a depressing date. “I’m sorry, I’m a bit of good mood killer.”

Blaine considers him for a moment. “Look Kurt, I’m not saying I’m not curious about that part of your life, but I’d really like to get to know _you_. How about we don’t talk about the ghost thing tonight, and stick to all of the other topics of a normal first date?”

Kurt is surprised at how tempting the offer is, but… “Besides the fact that I’ve never been on a first date before, I feel like that would be a huge misrepresentation. There’s not much to me except for the “ghost thing,” as you so eloquently put it, anymore.”

“Kurt,” Blaine says, his smile gentle. “That’s not remotely true. And maybe I can help you see that, if you’d let me.”

Kurt considers the pros and cons. On one hand he’s really tired of his current life, and the possibility of ignoring it for a few hours is a reprieve he hasn’t let himself have outside of sleep in a very long time. On the other hand, the crash back to reality after it’s over will be painful. But if he doesn’t take Blaine up on his offer, and they continue this stilted, woe-is-Kurt dinner conversation, the chances of Blaine wanting to take him to bed or even keep up their texting friendship seems slim.

“Ok,” he finally says, his voice small.

“Great!” Blaine’s voice is a little too exuberant, but Kurt returns his smile, surrendering to Blaine’s inherent optimism. “How about we start with taking turns asking each other questions? In between bites, our food is going to get cold!”

Kurt giggles at Blaine’s mock horror, and answers Blaine’s first question about favorite movies as they finally start eating.

From there, a pleasant hour passes, as they take turns revealing small details about themselves and often segue into funny stories.

Kurt talks about his love of fashion and briefly mentions his admission to FIT, but he doesn’t want to go into his aspirations about being a designer. He figures it’s implied. Instead he listens aptly to Blaine’s stories of his music composition classes at NYU, and all the crazy that comes along with a creative major like that.

Kurt also steers the conversation away from his own family, besides the basics. He’s not ready to talk about that yet. Luckily Blaine seems to accept that easily, and continues to make Kurt practically fall off his chair laughing by telling him increasingly ridiculous stories about his big brother, Cooper.

“No, I’m completely serious. The poor lady was just trying to eat lunch. She’s sitting at a table near the sidewalk, and Cooper walks over, stoops down to pet her dog and starts screaming, grabs the poor dog and holds it to his neck, fake blood flying everywhere.” He waits until Kurt’s laughter dies a little before he adds, “Did I mention it was a Yorkiepoo?”

Kurt dissolves into laughter once again. When he finally gets himself back under control, he just spends a few minutes enjoying Blaine’s twinkling eyes. “Do you think casting agents get that sort of thing a lot? Maybe they should try to keep their true identity shrouded, like food critics. How did she take it?”

“He’s lucky he didn’t get sued. At first she was irate, I mean, besides the general near heart attack, he got fake blood all over her dog. But my brother is a charmer, and he flirted his way down to the threat of a restraining order.”

“Ah, so no part in her movie?” Kurt feigns disbelief.

“Nope, though there was some other director having lunch there too, who was impressed with his enthusiasm, and offered him a job in some b-movie style web series. To hear Cooper tell it, he’s working for the next Hitchcock, instead of a guy whose last movie was about possessed furniture. Should I tell you how Cooper died in that one or would you like to wait and see it for yourself?”

“I don’t think I can handle the suspense. Tell me.”

“After having sexy times with the requisite blonde bimbo, a malignant bedspring pops through the mattress and right through Cooper’s chest.”

Kurt’s mouth drops open. “An evil bedspring?”

“Yup. It pops through, and, of course, rips his heart right out. So there it is, impaled on the spring, hovering in front of his face, and he’s screaming at it before he goes into his death throes.” Blaine starts reenacting the scene, and Kurt has to hold his stomach. He’s laughed so much its beginning to hurt.

They finish off the last bites of their dinner, mutually agree to hold off on dessert for a while, and start to clean up. Blaine turns the music up and puts on a livelier playlist, and it’s not long before they’re both singing along and bumping hips.

Kurt hasn’t felt this carefree in years, and he doesn’t think he’s ever been this comfortable with someone so quickly. He thinks about how he’d describe Blaine to someone ( _his dad_ ), and the first word that comes to mind is ‘delightful’.

When they dry and put away the last dish, Blaine immediately grabs both of Kurt’s hands, and swings him into a dance hold in the middle of the kitchen. Kurt doesn’t have experience dancing with a partner, but he’s danced by himself for years, and he thinks he does ok following Blaine’s lead, most of the time. There are a few sore toes by the end of the song but no one broke a bone, so Kurt considers it a win.

When they stop, they stand with their faces inches apart and Kurt decides to be brave and take the chance. He closes the distance between their mouths, and kisses Blaine softly.

Blaine is definitely a willing participant. When Kurt pulls back after a few seconds, Blaine surges forward to get back at Kurt’s mouth. The second kiss is deeper and more intense. Blaine’s hands come up to cup Kurt’s face and Kurt’s chest tightens almost beyond bearing. For the first time in his life he lets himself fully feel arousal for another person. When they finally pull apart, minutes or hours later, he doesn’t break eye contact.

He’s never heard his own voice come out so husky. “Would you like to take this to the bedroom?”

Blaine eyes go wide with shock briefly, and then Kurt can see the ‘no’ before Blaine has a chance to respond.

The rejection feels like a stab to the gut, and Kurt’s high school honed reflexes have him flinching away before he even realizes he’s doing it.

Blaine reaches out to grab Kurt’s arm before he can get very far. “Kurt,” he says, then again when Kurt tries to jerk free. “Kurt, please just listen to me. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I’m not a first date kind of guy.”

Kurt keeps his eyes on his feet. “I’m sorry, but that’s a luxury I don’t have.”

Blaine uses Kurt’s arm to reel him closer, and uses his other hand to tip Kurt’s chin up, trying to get Kurt to look at him. “Kurt, I really, really like you. This is the best first date I’ve ever been on. I’d like to see where this can go.”

“Where it can go? You’re looking at it Blaine. My apartment. We’re in the middle of the most exciting city in the world and every single one of our dates will take place right here. Tell me how long that’s going to keep your interest.” Kurt’s voice is bitter.

“I don’t want to give up on you just because there are some roadblocks. I’ve been in this city for almost a year now, and I’ve done a lot of the things that it has to offer, sometimes while out on dates with guys who seemed interesting at first. I’m not here just because you’re pretty much the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever seen. I’m here because you fascinate me and just the thought of getting to see you fills me with more excitement than seeing a Broadway show.”

Kurt swallows heavily. “I fascinate you, or my curse does?”

Blaine cups Kurt’s face again. “ _You_. If I can help you get rid of your curse I’ll do it in an instant.” He presses a slow, sweet kiss to Kurt’s mouth. “Will you go on a second date with me, Kurt Hummel?”

Kurt smiles. “Yes.”

\--

_Once Kurt started actually listening to the messages that the ghosts wanted him to deliver, he realized what a fool he was for thinking he could actually make a dent in the mass of spirits constantly surrounding him. For one thing, there were thousands of them, with new ones appearing all the time. For another, he just couldn’t bring himself to deliver most of the messages. He was certainly not going to accost a grieving widower to tell him that his children were not really his._

_When he finally picked out a ghost to help, it was a younger woman who just wanted to tell her boyfriend that she loved him one last time. She didn’t know the address, but she had a feeling for where he was and could lead Kurt there._

_Kurt was less frazzled this time, but still nervous, remembering how messy his first attempt was. He took a few deep breaths, muttered “There was a cat” to center himself, and knocked._

_The man who answered the door was older than Kurt had been expecting._

_“Hi, are you Brandon? I have a message from you from Irene.”_

_“Who?” Brandon asked, impatient confusion on his face._

_“Irene Grosman, your old girlfriend. She just wanted to say that she loves you, one more time.”_

_“Irene? Are you serious? We dated when we were sixteen! Whatever, I hope you don’t expect me to pay you for this shit.” And he slammed the door in Kurt’s face._

\--

For the next two months, Kurt’s life takes on an entirely new routine. During the day he delivers a message or two when he can, and sits in the park for a few hours, collecting more stories for his blog. In the evenings, Blaine comes by, with either takeout or groceries, and usually with music or a bouquet of flowers. The lights he strung up the first night are still there, and add a much needed touch of life and charm to the rather bleak apartment, as does Blaine himself, with his wide smile, endless enthusiasm and bright laughter.

Sometimes Santana joins them for a while, behaving herself rather well, but more often than not she disappears into the night. Kurt suspects she’s thrilled to not be his only source of emotional support for once, but he doesn’t let himself dwell on it for too long.

Besides dinner, there’s usually dancing, or a movie, or a board game. Sometimes all three. After the third date it usually takes them a few evenings to get through an entire movie, as they keep missing parts of it when the snuggling together turns more heated.

They haven’t done more than kiss, but they’ve happily done that for hours.

Kurt lets himself live in the bubble. They don’t discuss the ghosts besides a passing mention of how their days were. Blaine brings Kurt the pieces of the city that he can experience in the apartment, without going into detail about the parts that can’t be shared that way.

The bubble finally bursts on a Thursday night. Kurt lets himself into the apartment, slumps against the door and starts to type out a text when he registers the voices coming from the direction of the couch. Blaine must be early.

Knowing it to be a futile effort, Kurt tries to keep his face turned from Blaine and escape to his room. “Blaine, I’m sorry. I’m not feeling up to hanging out tonight. I was just about to text you.”

“Kurt.” Blaine’s voice is shocked, and he vaults over the back of the couch to get to Kurt in seconds, grabbing his shoulders and trying to get a good luck at Kurt’s face. “Kurt, what happened? What - did someone hit you?”

Kurt gives up trying to twist away and just drops his head. “He didn’t like the message I gave him from his wife,” he says in a small voice. The shock is starting to wear off and now his face is throbbing with pain.

“Ok. Ok. Let’s get you to bed. Santana, can you get him some painkillers and an ice pack?” Blaine steers Kurt into his bedroom even as Kurt’s vision starts to blur with tears. He doesn’t want to cry, not in front of Blaine. Plus, it would make his head hurt more. He’s not entirely sure what his problem is. He’s been hurt worse and handled it with more composure. Is it because there’s someone around to worry about him now?

Within moments he’s divested of his coat and shoes and is laying on his bed with an icepack, his head cushioned on Blaine’s lap.

“Does this happen often?” Blaine asks quietly, his fingers gently carding through Kurt’s hair.

Kurt sighs heavily, which probably ruins his chances of coming off as nonchalant when he says, “Occasionally. Not every week or anything.”

Blaine is quiet for a moment. “What was the message?”

“A fairly generic ‘I love you so much and I’m glad I got to marry you’ type of message.”

Blaine makes a shocked sound, and his fingers still for a moment before continuing his ministrations. “He punched you for that? How could that possibly make someone angry?”

“The first time someone reacted to a message like that with anger, I had the same questions. I couldn’t very well ask, so I tried my hand at cyber stalking and some Facebook detective work. It turns out that the husband remarried a month or two after his wife died, with a baby already on the way. So I’m guessing it’s usually a guilt thing.”

“But most people are happy to hear from their loved ones, right?”

Kurt shrugs. “Honestly, most people seem rather indifferent. I suppose an ‘I’m sorry’ after it’s too late to fix anything only goes so far.”

“Is that what most of the ghosts are trying to say?”

“It’s one of the more common ones, yeah. That or messages of love to people who they think had reasons to doubt.” He gives another big sigh. “Those don’t usually seem to have the desired effect either. When I first started doing this I thought I’d be delivering messages that people would be eager to hear, that the ghosts would be clearing up major misunderstandings or that their loved ones would be grateful to hear from them one more time. Instead everyone seems impatient, bitter, or indifferent.” _I’m starting to doubt that love actually exists._ “It’s nothing like the ones you see on the psychic shows on TV. I’m still waiting for someone to divulge the location to a hidden fortune.” He lifts the bag of ice off his eye for a moment to get a better look at Blaine. “Unless that’s what your grandma told you?”

Blaine smiles down at him softly. “No such luck.”

Kurt resettles the ice and makes himself more comfortable. “If you don’t mind my asking, what did she tell you?”

“I don’t mind you asking, but I can’t really tell you the specifics. My grandmother was famous for giving really good advice. In my family it was known that at least once during your life my grandma would come to you and tell you about an opportunity or decision that was coming up that had the potential to be life changing. Only a fool would ignore her words completely. Only she passed away before it was time for her to tell me about mine. So that’s what she was doing.”

Kurt is beyond curious. “But you can’t tell me what she said? Was it good? You’re going to take her advice, right?”

Blaine laughs. “Well, one of the rules is that you can’t tell anyone what the advice is until everything is done with, though sometimes it’s easy enough to guess the gist of it when people would make sudden career changes. Yes, it was good, and yes, I’m going to follow it. Someday I’ll be able to tell you what she said.” He leans down and presses a kiss to the part of Kurt’s forehead not currently under the ice bag. “So I for one am grateful. Of course, I miss my grandma like crazy, but I was also really disappointed to know that she would never be able to call me over for my turn. The stories of what she’s told others in my family have taken on a legendary quality over the years, and everyone has been pitying me quite heavily since she died. It was almost like I couldn’t possibly have a happy life without her words of direction.” He chuckles humorlessly. “And on my bad days I started to believe it myself.”

“Did you tell your family about her contacting you?”

Now Blaine’s laugh has the joy that Kurt is used to hearing there. “Yes, I did. I think my mom wants to send you the world’s biggest fruit basket for Christmas. And that’s without my telling her we’re dating.”

The happy glow in Kurt’s chest, caused by knowing that one of his messages actually had a positive effect, dims a little. “You don’t want to tell them?” he says, then instantly regrets sounding so pathetic.

“My family can be a little overbearing. I’ve told you stories about my brother. He gets some of that melodrama from my mother. If I told them how important you are to me they’d show up on your doorstep within days and grill you relentlessly.” Blaine’s voice goes soft. “I hope you don’t mind, Kurt, but I’d like to keep you to myself for a while longer. I’m still feeling greedy with your time. I’m even starting to resent the time I have to spend at school, and I like my classes.”

Kurt puts the ice pack down on the nightstand, and tugs on Blaine’s arms. “Come here,“ he says demandingly, and rearranges them until they’re both laying on the bed, arms wrapped around each other. Kurt tucks his head under Blaine’s chin and breathes in his scent. “I could happily spend the next ten years right here,” he says, so quietly that he’s not certain Blaine can hear him, though the tightening of Blaine’s arms around him suggests that he did.

\--

Now that the subject of Kurt’s ghosts has been brought up again, Kurt figures it’s time to get it all out. If Blaine is thinking of sticking around for awhile, he should have all the information before making a final decision. So a few days later, after Kurt’s headache finally recedes and Blaine stops treating him like he’s going to break if he stays out of bed for more than a few minutes at a time, he sits on the couch with Blaine holding his hand and Santana sitting in the armchair.

It’s been a long time since he’s had to say the words out loud, but the story runs through his head so often (because the _pure absurdity_ of it, if only he’d done just the _tiniest thing_ differently he wouldn’t have ruined his entire life) that he doesn’t have to think about where to begin.

“It’s not exactly a thrilling tale. I had just moved to the city three days earlier, about three weeks before classes started. I was going for fashion design, so of course I spent an inordinate amount of time obsessing over what I was going to wear the first day.”

“Obviously,” Blaine interjects, and Kurt gives his hand a quick squeeze.

“I was wandering around the city and I ran across this little antique store. In the back I found this interesting looking brooch. I picked it up to take a closer look, and somebody behind me knocked something over, which made a loud crashing noise. I jumped, and pricked my finger on the pin.” He looks down at the offending finger, currently clasped in Blaine’s hold. Maybe it worked like a zombie infection, and if he’d cut the finger off immediately he could have stopped the curse.

“There was only a small drop of blood, but this feeling swept through me and I kind of blacked out for a few seconds. And then suddenly the entire store was packed with people. So many people it didn’t seem possible that they all fit in there.”

He had immediately been hit with a wave of claustrophobia, and started to push his way out to the street, only to accidentally bump into someone - and fall right through their body. Overcome by panic, he ran out of the store to find the sidewalks almost solid with the amount of people there. Not sure who was real and who wasn’t, he ran for home, bumping into people left and right, dodging people who didn’t exist, practically sobbing in hysteria.  


“Everywhere I looked there were thousands of people. I had no idea what was going on, or why I couldn’t touch some of them. I have no idea how I got home without being hit by a taxi, because I couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of me most of the time.”

It didn’t get better at home. There were people in his apartment, milling about, going through the motions of living. He started screaming at them to get out, and they all stopped to look at him. As they all rushed over, he realized that they hadn’t known he could see them until he gave himself away, and now they all started talking at once, asking him questions, telling him things about themselves that he couldn’t make out over his panic, over the other dozen people talking at the same time.

“Once they started talking to me, they never shut up. This one guy said the same ten words into my ear over and over for three months.”

“What did he say?” Blaine asks.

“‘I didn’t mean to kill her. Tell them I’m sorry.’” He mimics the guy’s speech pattern, the cadence burned into his memory.

Blaine’s eyes get impossibly wider. “Did you deliver his message?”

Kurt shakes his head. “No, he’s still around. But there are other, newer ghosts who are more insistent, and they speak over him most of the time now.”

“Anyway, once I got home, I put on some headphones to drown them out and hid under my covers for hours, like any self-respecting adult,” he says deprecatingly. “I eventually fell asleep, and when they were still there when I woke up, well, let’s just say I didn’t handle it very well.

If I hadn’t run out of food, who knows how long it would have taken me to venture out of my apartment again. I would wear my headphones and have to walk really slowly, with my arms out in front of me like a kid pretending to be blind. I started making my way to psychics and anyone who claimed any sort of mystical knowledge, begging them for help.”

“No one knew how to help you?” Blaine asks quietly, after Kurt trails off.

Santana takes over for the first time. “No one had any knowledge of such an ability, or of a curse being passed through a brooch like that before. Most of the people who can commune with the dead do it through herbs and spells and symbols, with hour-long rituals.” She smiles viciously. “A few of the stupid clairvoyant bitches even seemed envious of his “powers” until they realized that there was no way to shut them off or control them. Despite what they say on their reality tv shows, most of them are in it for the money and fame, not to actually help people. That’s just a side effect. People like my abuela are more willing to help, but they didn’t know anything either.”

Blaine’s hold on Kurt’s hand is tighter now, and Kurt is hesitant to look at his expression. “So no one could help you at all?”

“Santana did,” Kurt says quietly. “She looked through a library’s worth of books and came up with the ward that keeps most of the ghosts out of here.”

“Most?” Blaine sounds shocked, and Kurt realizes he never told him about the few lingering spirits that were as permanent as the wall fixtures.

“There’s an older couple that putters around the kitchen. They don’t talk to me, rarely even seem to notice I’m there. And then there’s a hulk of a guy in the corner,” Kurt points. “He’s angry about something, but he doesn’t really move or talk, so I ignore him.” He tries to, anyway. Sometimes the anger seems to roll off of the spirit in waves, and leaves Kurt with a pit in his stomach and a feeling of impending doom he has a hard time shaking off. He hasn’t told Santana that last part, as he doesn’t want to sound ungrateful or make her feel guilty that her ward isn’t strong enough, and because he feels ridiculously melodramatic even thinking about saying the words ‘impending doom’ out loud.

“We call him Black Angus. Sometimes Gloomy Gus,” Santana adds, and Kurt is grateful for her lack of seriousness for once. “We’re still researching. We don’t have any strong leads yet, but we’ve made some new contacts that look promising.”

Kurt tries to look like he still has confidence in the hope Santana is projecting, but he knows it doesn’t reach his eyes. He gave up a while ago.

“The ward doesn’t work other places? Like, could you ward a restaurant door or something?”

“It’s a multiple day casting process, and the symbol has to be renewed constantly. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.” Blaine nods, obviously expecting a negative answer. Kurt doesn’t see any hope in Blaine’s eyes either.  
After a few more stories about their attempts at finding a cure or ways to get around his crippling limitations, Kurt and Blaine retire to Kurt’s bedroom. Blaine’s kisses seem almost desperate, like he can fix Kurt through sheer willpower and wishful thinking.

For the first time they don’t end at kissing. Not a word is spoken between them as clothes are removed and Blaine maps out Kurt’s body like he’s trying to memorize it. 

Afterwards, while Kurt is still recovering from the newfound pleasure of Blaine moving inside of him, and Blaine’s tears have dried on Kurt’s skin, Kurt lets his brain acknowledge the source of the new pit in his stomach.

This night has felt like a goodbye.

\--

Kurt’s dreams are murky and violent. Blaine is always there, sometimes walking away into the distance while someone holds Kurt back, and other times yelling Kurt’s name as Kurt is being suffocated by a large shadowy figure trying to completely engulf him.

He’s awakened by a shout out in the kitchen, and then let’s out a startled yelp of his own when he opens his eyes to a figure standing over him in the dim morning light. 

“Kurt?” Blaine’s concerned, sleepy croak in bed next to him makes Kurt turn his head that way for a moment, and then when he turns back the figure is gone.  
“What’s going on?” Blaine asks, and Kurt doesn’t know what to tell him. Was that Black Angus standing over him, or just a remnant from Kurt’s nightmare? The angry spirit has never moved from his corner of the living room before.

Kurt is still hesitating on what to say when angry cursing from the kitchen distracts them both and they scramble out of bed (and into clothes) before rushing out to see what Santana is so upset about. As soon as they leave the room they both stop in shock.

The entire kitchen area is covered in white powder, mixed with broken crockery on the floor. The ceramic canisters they kept their flour and sugar in are now smashed open, their contents spread throughout the tiny kitchen.

Santana is glaring at Kurt. “Have you been hiding telekinetic powers from me?”

“What? No!” Kurt yelps, shocked at the very suggestion.

“Maybe there was a small earthquake?” Blaine suggests timidly.

“If they had fallen off the shelf they would be over there,” Santana gestures. “These were dropped right in the middle of the kitchen. That had to be deliberate.”

Kurt gives her his best ‘I have no freaking idea’ face, and she loses steam after a few moments.

“Well, I know what excitement is in store for us today,” she says with a sigh, pulling her hair back into a tighter ponytail.

They clean quietly for about twenty minutes, when Kurt catches Blaine glancing surreptitiously at his watch for the third time. 

“Blaine, go. I know you have stuff to do for class. Thank you for your help, but we’ve got this, it’s fine.”

After a token protest, Blaine gives Kurt a quick kiss and takes off for home. Kurt continues to go through the motions of cleaning, practically on autopilot, when Santana finally speaks.

“So, was that some bed thumping I heard last night or was that our new poltergeist warming up?”

“Not now, Santana, please,” Kurt says tiredly. She stops wiping down a cupboard door to look at him.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t put a more positive spin on things last night,” she says, sounding uncharacteristically apologetic.

Kurt just shrugs, not looking up from his work. “It’s fine. I don’t want to give him a false sense of hope. It’s better that he has a realistic understanding of the situation.”

“Kurt -” she starts, and cuts herself off when he shakes his head. Sighing, she switches to “Do you have any idea what happened out here?”

“No, I really don’t. I’ve never seen any ghost so much as make a blade of grass twitch. And I’m pretty sure neither Blaine nor I are sleepwalkers.” He stops to survey their progress. “I think that’s good enough for now. I’m going to take a nap.” He doesn’t wait for Santana’s input, just goes back to his bedroom and lays down. He feels like his brain hasn’t really caught up with everything that’s happened in the last twelve hours, and he hopes to shut it off before that happens, at least for a little while longer. 

\--  
_Kurt’s been trying to be optimistic that he could make a difference in someone’s life by delivering messages, but some days it’s hard to believe. So many of the ghosts seem to want to get a weight off of their own chest, and don’t care that it would make the person hearing the message feel worse. Were people always this selfish, or did death reduce you to a worse version of yourself?_

_He finally picked out a polite-for-a-ghost man, another "tell my wife I loved her" message. The woman who answered the door had a hard, bitter expression._

_“Your husband just wanted to tell you that he loved you, that he was glad that he married you.”_

_“Oh yeah?” she goes off into a tirade. “You tell that spineless, sackless, ambitionless piece of garbage that I wasted my best years on him! Always wanting to stay home, spend a quiet evening together! I should have married Gary! He wanted to take me to the theater every night and show me off. He knew how to treat a woman!”_

_She was still yelling when Kurt walked away and left. He didn’t look to see how the ghost was taking it._

\--

 

He’s not particularly surprised when Blaine begs off visiting him for the next two days. There’s talk of school work and other obligations, and Kurt just tries his best to sound understanding and doesn’t ask for details. 

He goes a little overboard catching up on his sleep, but his dreams continue to be disturbing and not in the least bit restful. He wakes up feeling more tired than he was when he went to bed. He works on the blog he’s been neglecting while spending so much time with Blaine, and uses it as an excuse to limit Blaine’s next visit so they don’t have time for much more than sex and sleep. Blaine has midterms coming up, and he’s already mentioned that he won’t be able to come over very often for a couple of weeks. Kurt wants to put off any conversations they might have for as long as he can. Anytime Blaine looks like he wants to start a serious conversation, Kurt distracts him with kisses, until by the end of the night the only words of any weight that have been spoken is when Blaine chants Kurt’s name as he’s thrusting into him.

The next morning he wakes up to find that the window near where Black Angus is standing is shattered. He doesn’t bring Blaine’s attention to it. He manages to gently encourage Blaine, still adorably sleep and befuddled, out the door before he wakes up Santana and tells her that he’ll call a repair service.

He decides to go up to the roof to dictate more blog stories, so he grabs his laptop and a coat. He installed a voice-to-text software so he could just repeat what the ghosts were saying, and then he edits it to a more readable story later.

He usually does two or three ghosts at a time when he does this, depending on how talkative they are. Some of them can ramble for hours without saying much. He settles in and lets the words flow through him, not even really listening to the stories. 

And then suddenly Santana is shaking his shoulder, and he cuts himself off, coming back to attention. She says his name with a bit of urgency, and he turns to her, dazed. His throat is sore, his tongue is dry and he realizes that his laptop is off.

“Kurt. You’ve been out here for four hours! What the hell is going on?” Santana looks like she’s going to demand answers, but Kurt has none for her.

He has to take a few gulps from the water bottle he brought up with him before he can talk at all, and even then his voice sounds scratchy and weak. “I don’t know, San. I zoned out. I think I’m just tired. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”

She doesn’t look like she believes him, but helps get him and his stuff into the building without calling him out on it. He immediately goes to lay down, hoping enough sleep will finally snap him out of whatever fog his mind has decided to wander into. Maybe he’s already grieving, as he feels like the end of his relationship with Blaine is zooming towards him. Maybe it’s just these damn nightmares that he can’t shake. Maybe he really is getting a cold. He stares blankly out the window until a shadowy figure blocks it from his view, then he closes his eyes and falls into sleep.

Santana wakes him up again a few hours later. Blaine comes over for dinner, and Kurt keeps losing track of the conversation. Blaine throws worried looks his way but doesn’t address it directly.

It isn’t until after they’ve finished eating that Blaine takes Kurt’s hand and leads him to the couch. “Kurt, there’s something I need to tell you.” Kurt looks down at their joined hands and waits for a blow he doesn’t have the energy to brace himself against.

“Something’s come up, and I need to go home for a few days for spring break. My flight leaves tomorrow.” Kurt looks up in surprise, and Blaine must misunderstand the reason for his shocked expression. “I would have told you sooner, but things just came together this morning.”

“It’s ok. Is your family ok?”

“Yeah, Kurt, it’s nothing bad, there’s just something I need to take care of. Are you going to be all right? You don’t seem like yourself lately.”

Kurt lets his relief at the reprieve fuel his smile. “I’m fine, I’ve just been really tired lately. Haven’t been sleeping well. Do you need to leave now or can you stay a bit longer?”

Blaine searches Kurt’s eyes for a few moments, and then leans forward to kiss him. “I have an hour or two if there’s something you can think of to do.”

Kurt doesn’t waste much time getting Blaine into his bedroom after that. 

Despite his best intentions, Kurt falls asleep afterwards, warm and cozy in Blaine’s embrace. He knows he should be trying to soak up the remaining time he has with Blaine, or go out into the living room to see what the latest damage was (he definitely heard a crash.). He wakes up when Blaine’s phone rings on the nightstand, but doesn’t bother to move or open his eyes even as he hears Blaine curse and answer it, getting out of bed to go stand by the window.

“Hey, Sebastian,” Blaine says quietly

“Blaine! You said you were coming out tonight, where the hell are you?” The person, Sebastian apparently, on the other end of the phone sounds like they’re screaming and Kurt couldn’t have stopped eavesdropping even if he wanted to.

“I said I might, but it’s not looking likely. I have to get up early tomorrow to catch a flight.”

“For fuck’s sake, you used to be fun. You know, there are plenty of hot guys here who would love to lavish attention on you and your sexy ass, you don’t need to stay anchored to that antisocial homebody. I mean sure, at first it seemed like an ideal booty call arrangement, but you’ve been so miserable the last few weeks. I think it’s time to move on, my friend.”

“You’re an asshole. He’s not - “ Blaine’s voice starts to rise in volume and he cuts himself off. “Look, I’ll call you when I get back to the city and we’ll see when we can get together, ok?” Kurt hears Blaine hang up, then feels the bed sag under his weight as he sits on the edge.

”You can go out to see your friends if you want. I don’t mind, you know.” Kurt is pretty proud that he got the words out without choking on them.

“I’d rather be here with you as long as I can. Clubbing just isn’t high on my list of priorities right now.” Blaine doesn’t say it like being with Kurt is a pleasure he doesn’t want to end, but with a seriousness that sounds to Kurt like impending grief. 

Kurt looks at Blaine’s bowed head and wishes that Blaine was still the joyful wide eyed boy he’d first met. At nineteen years old, Blaine should still be going out to clubs and hanging out with his friends. While Kurt has known since he was eight that no one is safe from tragedy and grief, he hates being the one to bring so much weight and heartbreak to Blaine’s life. 

Kurt almost wishes Blaine was leaving now, because he’s not sure how long he can hold off the tears, and he’s desperately afraid that Blaine will want to talk. The thought of it is almost enough to have him shrivel up into a ball of anxiety. A distraction is in order, and luckily Kurt knows that Blaine is a sucker for blowjobs (no pun intended).

They leave the bedroom about an hour later to find the television smashed all over the floor. A quick glance at the corner of the room and Kurt sees that the shadowy form of Black Angus is a lot darker and more solid looking than normal. There’s no doubt left that he’s the source of the destruction, and Kurt doesn’t want to think about why it only happens when he and Blaine are intimate. 

Kurt assures Blaine that he and Santana can handle the clean up job, and ushers him to the door. Blaine looks reluctant to leave and pulls Kurt into a deep, lingering kiss right at the door. And then suddenly Kurt’s mind is filled with a feeling of imminent danger, and he looks up to see one of their kitchen knives flying through the air towards Blaine’s back. Kurt throws them both sideways to the floor with a cry, and the knife buries itself in the door, cutting into the outer edge of the warding sign. 

“What the hell?” Blaine says, fear making his voice higher than normal.

“Blaine, get out of here, quickly!” Kurt tries to manhandle him back to the door, but Blaine resists.

“I’m not going to leave you here!”

“Blaine, it won’t hurt me, and Santana is here, she’ll help me take care of this. Please go, before it tries to hurt you again.” Kurt honestly doesn’t know if the ghost will try to hurt him or not, but as long as Blaine’s safe he doesn’t really care. Blaine seems hesitant at first, but then his face firms up with resolve.

“Kurt, please be careful. I’ll see you soon, ok?” With one last quick kiss, he’s out the door, and Kurt is hit with the sound of wailing spirits. Except this time they don’t all stop when the door closes again. The broken ward isn’t doing it’s job anymore, and Kurt’s vision slowly starts to fill with desperate faces.

Kurt turns on his heel and storms over to where Black Angus is lurking. He’s never considered trying to find out what this ghost’s story is before, as it gives him the creeps anytime he’s gone near it, but now he just wants it gone.

“What the hell is your problem!?” he shrieks at it, getting right up where it’s face should be. He hears Santana calling his name from her bedroom, but he ignores her. His fists are clenched tightly and he’s so angry he’s practically vibrating with it. “I’m going to figure out how to exorcise your evil ass and send you to hell where you be-” And suddenly his voice is cut off as the angry ghost surges forward and envelops him in blackness. His sight is cut off, and then for a long time, he knows nothing.

\--

His mind is filled with turmoil, his soul wrestling with memories and feelings and urges that aren’t his. There’s a craving for blood, and pain, and images of knives, and wrists bound with rope, and dark red spilling across floors. Sometimes he’s the one being tied up and cut into, and sometimes he’s the one doing it to other people. He’s suffocating under the weight of a much larger person, and then he’s running through dark woods, chasing someone, and being chased, the glint of a knife in the moonlight in his own hand, or flashing amidst the trees behind him. His ears fill with the sound of screams, both his own and those of others, and dark laughter and whispers that make him want to crawl out of his own skin. Underneath everything else is shame, knowing that if he was given the option to escape his own body to leave it for this horrible man, he would, he would - he just wants it all to stop…

 

And then, suddenly, it does. 

He comes back to himself with a gasp. His eyes fly open to see his bedroom, filled with sunlight, and a tall, black haired man standing over him. Further inspection reveals a burning pain in his shoulder, and that he’s tied to his headboard, shirtless. Santana is standing on the other side of his bed, tears in her eyes and her hand held over her mouth.

He’s exhausted beyond anything he’s ever felt in his life but the thought of going to sleep right now terrifies him. He’s having a hard time moving even his head. Kurt takes a moment to breathe, and then whispers words out of his scratchy throat.

“San, what’s..?” Or tries to anyway. Physically and mentally, forming a question is just too much work. 

Unfortunately, Santana seems to be having similar troubles, as she only gets out a few incoherent syllables before she starts sobbing. She’s holding both hands in front of her face now, and Kurt can see that one of them is wrapped in white bandages.

Desperate for any information he turns to the stranger, who is holding what looks like a needle gun. ‘Tattoo’, Kurt’s mind supplies, and he looks down at his own shoulder to see a black symbol now embedded in his skin.

“So, my name is Elliott,” the stranger says with a sheepish grin. “The short answer is, you were possessed, and I just tattooed an anti-possession symbol on you to force the spirit out of your body.”

“He’s gone?” Kurt whispers, and god, he needs some water. And food, he realizes shortly after. He’s never felt so hungry in his life. “How long…?”

“Three days,” Santana practically snarls, drawing his eyes back to her. She’s glaring at him now, and Kurt is relieved. An angry Santana is more reassuring than a crying one. She recovers enough to bring a cup to his mouth that had been sitting on his nightstand. Kurt’s expecting water, but gets some kind of herbal mixture instead. “It should help with the post-possession hangover, she mutters, before remembering her anger. “You’ve been gone for three days! I had to tie you to the bed after you came at me with a knife!” Kurt’s eyes flash to her hand, and guilt pours into him. “None of the normal exorcisms worked, I had no idea if I was going to be able to get him out! Don’t you dare ever do something like this again, do you hear me?”

“If I promise, will you untie me?” Kurt asks, and is almost amused when they both make similar, ‘oops’ faces and each go to work on one of his wrists. Whatever was in that cup is working, and Kurt feels like he may be able to function at a basic level at least after all. 

After taking a few moments to drink some water, shove the first food he finds into his mouth and get cleaned up, Kurt joins Santana at the table. Elliott is nowhere to be seen. 

“I’m sorry. I hurt you. I never wanted to do that,” he says quietly.

“It’ll heal,” she says, looking down at the mug she’s got her hands wrapped around. He’s never seen her face look so haggard, and he realizes she probably hasn’t slept since this started. The memory of those last few moments after Blaine left come back to him, and he glances at the door to see the warding symbol back in place, slightly to the side to avoid the new mar in the door’s surface. He reluctantly lets his eyes wander to the corner. The dark ghost is still there, blackness seething throughout it’s shadowy form and Kurt shivers in fear. 

“Not gone,” he whispers, and Santana’s eyes start to tear up again.

“I don’t know how to get him out,” her voice wobbles. “I’m so sorry, I’ve been wracking my brain, but the warding spell is the only one I know and if that isn’t working…”

“But he can’t possess me again?”

“I don’t think so, but I have no experience with this. And he can apparently make knives fly through the air, so what’s to stop him from doing something to cut the tattoo and break the symbol? I just don’t know.”

Kurt pretends he isn’t shaken to his core by the thought of having that evil spirit inside him again. “So, you’ve talked to Blaine? Unless Angus, whose real name is Daniel, by the way, told you about the knife.”

“Both. That fucker talked nonstop for three days. But yeah, I talked to Blaine.”

“What did you tell him?” Kurt isn't sure what answer he wants to hear, until Santana says “The truth,” and Kurt realizes it wasn't that one.

If Blaine knew that Kurt was in danger and didn’t care enough to be here, to be helping…

“No, honey, stop.” Santana interrupts his spiral into despair. “He wanted to come, but he’s on the other side of the country right now, and what he’s doing is important. He’ll be back as soon as he can.”

Kurt tries to believe her, but even if he does… ”It’s not safe for him to come here. Daniel threw the knife at him. He wants to kill Blaine.”

Santana nods. It was probably one of the things the ghost talked about. She looks hesitant about something but Kurt doesn’t really think things can get much bleaker. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”

“About three weeks ago,” she starts slowly. “I found what we’ve been looking for. The spell to break the curse.”

Kurt doesn’t feel even a second of hope at her words. The tone of her voice already tells him that it isn’t good news. “But…?” he prompts when she doesn’t continue.  
“It’s not that difficult of a spell, but we need the brooch,” she finally gets out, and Kurt knows why she didn’t tell him sooner.

He made it back to the antique store about a month after this whole thing had started, only to find no trace of the brooch that he had pricked his finger with. The store owner claimed no knowledge of ever having carried such an item.

He had sketched it from memory and Santana had given out copies to her contacts in her supernatural circles, but no word had come of it.

It could be anywhere in the world, and their chances of finding it are almost nonexistent.

“So that’s it then,” he says quietly to himself, and then is startled when Santana hits his shoulder. 

“No, don’t give up now. Look, I didn’t mean to keep secrets from you, or to go behind your back, but Blaine came over the one day when you were sleeping and he saw me crying. I ended up telling him about what I had found. He called me a few days later and said that he might be able to help. That’s what he’s doing now. The director that his brother works for knows this girl that he claims can find anything. Blaine is seeing if she can help us.”

Kurt blinks at her for a moment. “A Finder? Aren’t they ridiculously rare and expensive? How the hell would one be willing to do a favor for the boyfriend of the brother of the cheesy star of the horrible films a director she knows makes?”

Santana’s mouth opens and closes a few times. “I am way too tired to reply to that. All I’m saying is don’t give up hope. We may be coming to the end of this whole saga soon. We just have to make it hopefully just a few more days in one piece.”

Kurt isn’t willing to get his hopes up yet, but he gives her a small smile and they eat in peace for a little longer, before both giving in to the need for sleep.

It’s probably only an hour later when they’re both woken up to the sound of every one of their kitchen knives being flung into Kurt’s closed bedroom door. Apparently Daniel’s powers don’t yet include being able to turn doorknobs.

Santana joins him in looking at the pincushion his door has become, and then says what’s going through his mind as well. “I don’t think it’s safe for you to stay here anymore.”

He nods. “That’s ok. There’s something I have to do. I’ve put if off long enough.”

\--

He should call Blaine. He knows he should. He just can’t get himself to do it. Instead he texts. A simple “I’m ok,” at first, and then doesn’t answer the phone when Blaine calls him immediately after he hits send. He lets the phone ring and ring as Blaine keeps calling, but he can’t do it. There’s too much, in his head, in his heart, and he’s buckling under the fear of what he’s about to do and how he’ll move on from it, no matter how it turns out.

“I’m sorry,” he texts, after the fourth unanswered phone call.

“Kurt, why aren’t you answering? I need to hear your voice, please.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t talk right now. I need a little bit of time, please understand. Santana can tell you what happened.”

Blaine doesn’t reply for a few minutes, and then “Ok. Please call me as soon as you can. I love you.”

Kurt’s breath catches. They’ve never said that to each other. Kurt feels guilty for making Blaine declare it by text, but there’s no taking it back now. And if they were talking Kurt isn’t sure if he’d be able to hold back his immediate response: *‘you say that now, but for how long? How long before you resent me for all the things you gave up for me?’* But by text he can refrain from spewing out his insecurities, and hurting Blaine by casting doubts on Blaine’s brave declaration. 

He feels more vulnerable putting it out into the universe, as though making it a written fact will make it easier for fate to take it away from him, but it’s the truth anyway, and it’s for Blaine. “I love you too. I hope I’ll see you soon.”

\--

Desperate times call for wacky theories. A few weeks ago, Blaine had told him about something he’d seen on a tv show, where the characters in a horror movie used their phones to see ghosts that were invisible to the naked eye. Kurt didn’t pay much attention to the idea at the time, as _not_ seeing ghosts isn’t his problem, but it had stayed in the back of his mind. As he’s trying to figure out how to successfully navigate a crowded airport, it occurs to him that he might be able to do something with that idea after all. 

_He_ can see ghosts, but technology can’t. Therefore, although he knows he looks like an over the top millennial, he walks through the airport with an iPad in front of his face, using the camera function to show him what’s directly in front of him, who’s a real person and who he can walk through. It’s not a perfect solution, but he eventually makes it onto his plane, where he can keep his eyes shut and his headphones on.

He lets the iPad drop as soon as he sees his dad. He doesn’t care if he bumps into people, he tries to walk through anybody that’s in his way. Burt is standing as close to the security exit as he can, and envelops Kurt in a bone crushing hug as soon as he’s within arm’s reach. They pay no attention to the fact that they’re blocking half of the exit, both of them crying and holding on.

It’s been a long two years.

\--

_The first thing that Kurt wanted to do when he realized it wasn’t going to go away was call his dad._

_The last thing on earth Kurt wanted to do was call his dad._

_His dad was the one safe place Kurt had in the world, and it was always his first reflex to turn to his dad for help. But what would his dad be able to do? His dad had no experience with the supernatural, and it would do nothing but make Burt feel useless and stressed out that he couldn’t help. And the last thing that Kurt wanted to do was put more stress on Burt’s heart. Plus…_

_If he told his dad what he could do now, would his dad ask him to come home? All of these ghosts, wailing and crying in his ear, asking him to deliver messages or tell their stories, sometimes of unexpressed love, but also of bitterness, of resentment, of petty jealousies and pathetic excuses. He was beginning to lose faith in humankind. Was there no one who just wanted to tell their family that they loved them, one last time? Who wanted to tell their children that they were proud of them? If he went home, and his mother was there, what would she say to him? Would she no longer be the loving mother he remembered, but tell him things he didn’t want to know, things he could never unhear?_

\--

Kurt knows he’ll have to tell his dad everything eventually, but for now he begs off, and Burt is thankful enough to finally be able to see and talk to his son again that he holds off, even if it is grudgingly.

Kurt encourages his dad to talk about the garage, and he knows his father’s voice well enough to be able to pick out most of the words above the voices of the spirits still raging in his ears. He can’t very well put on his earphones right now.

He does eventually doze off, and he knows he still looks exhausted enough to get away with it. If being possessed doesn’t count towards sleep, and he doubts that it does, he’s barely gotten a couple of hours in the last five days.

His father wakes him up when they pull up in front of Kurt’s childhood home, and suddenly Kurt isn’t tired anymore. The spirits aren’t as thick here as they are in New York, plus there are no living people besides his dad to worry about, so Kurt is able to act relatively normal as they carry his bags into the house.

Kurt holds his breath when they walk in, but he doesn’t recognize any of the ghosts he can see in the living room. He makes out his dad asking him if he’s hungry, and answers in the affirmative as his eyes fix on the stairs. If his mom is anywhere, it will probably be in one of the bedrooms. 

He startles when his dad claps him on the shoulder suddenly and tells him to go upstairs and lay down.

“I’ll call you when the food’s ready,” Burt says, and his familiar smile is so comforting that Kurt wants to cry. Instead he makes himself return the smile and forces his legs to climb the stairs.

He leaves his body on autopilot, and it carries him over the threshold of his old bedroom. He shuts the door out of new habit and notices two things immediately.

His mother is sitting on his bed, looking at him with a loving smile.

There are no other ghosts here, and for the first time since he left his apartment this morning, no voices in his ears.

“Mom?” his voice breaks and he stumbles to his knees on the floor next to her.

She smiles at him tremulously. “Kurt. My baby, look at you! You’ve grown so much.”

“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers, drinking in her features. He looks at photos of his mother all the time, but nothing can replace seeing her here in front of him. For a few minutes they just look at each other, and Kurt sees nothing but love in her eyes.

Finally, he can’t stand the wait any more. “What do you need to tell me? Or is it for Dad?”

But Elizabeth just furrows her brow. “Tell you? What do you mean?”

“Every ghost I’ve ever seen, thousands of spirits, and they all have something to get off of their chest. Usually something that no one wants to hear.”

“Oh honey.” She lifts her hand to him, but lowers it again with a sigh.

“Is it even possible to get through life without being filled with such selfish feelings? I don’t understand. Is there no such thing as love? Is it always so temporary?” Thoughts that have been worrying him since he first starting listening to ghosts start pouring out of his mouth. He’s never dared to ask anyone before, but with each new self-absorbed message he’s asked to deliver to uncaring family and lovers, he’s been filled with more and more doubts about life. 

“Kurt, sweetheart, listen to me. Love is very real. Most people love very strongly, and when they die, their families know that they loved them, and the dead can move on right away. It’s only when people don’t know how to love, or never felt that anyone loved them, that their spirits linger, and want to try one more time at making some kind of connection.”  
Kurt’s lip starts to quiver. “Then why are you here? Don’t you know we loved you?”

“Of course I do, Kurt. Of course I know that, and I loved you and your dad so much, I’ll never be able to tell you. I haven’t been here waiting, honey. I felt it when you entered the house, I think because of your strong link to the spirit world, and I wanted to take the chance to see you one more time. But I have nothing to tell you that you didn’t already know in your heart. I will say that I’m so proud of who you’ve become, but I hope that that doesn’t come as a surprise to you.”

Kurt starts sobbing, relief, gratitude and love overwhelming him. He tries to not take his eyes off of his mother, knowing that this is the last time he’ll see her and not wanting to miss a second.

After about ten minutes of silence, he hears his dad call his name and tell him that his lunch is ready. Elizabeth gives him a loving smile and he knows what to do.

He leads his mom downstairs to where his dad is standing in the living room, now looking with concern at Kurt’s tearstained face. Kurt walks up and pulls his dad into a hug, and sees his mom looking at them with happiness and sorrow, before wrapping her arms around them both. And even though Kurt can’t feel it physically, he swears that he can feel *something*.

“Goodbye, Mom,” he mouths into his father’s shoulder, even as his mom fades away.

\--

The negotiations to allow Kurt to return to New York are brutal. Burt finally gives in when Kurt allows him to book a flight in Kurt’s name to fly back to Ohio in two months.

“And I’m getting the full story out of you. No excuses.”

Kurt hopes he can tell the story completely in past tense by that time. Even though there are fewer ghosts here than in the city, he still doesn’t get a moment of peace. He feels brittle and overwhelmed, the comfort of his old house and of talking to his mom marred by the lack of even a single moment of peace to enjoy it. And unless Santana has managed to exorcise their apartment, he’s not sure what he’s going to do once he gets back home. He’s had his phone shut off since he’s been in Ohio, and while he knows that it’s probably driving Blaine and Santana crazy, his visit has been so emotionally overwrought that it’s been all he can deal with.

He turns his phone on long enough to text Santana that he made his flight once he’s in his seat, before closing his eyes and trying not to hope for anything in particular.

\--

Blaine meets him at the airport, and Kurt would be hard pressed to decide whether that reunion is more or less emotional than the one with his dad. Blaine holds on to him as though he’s afraid that Kurt is going to disappear any second, while Kurt tries to fill his senses with Blaine’s presence, and ignore all the other people he can hear, both dead and alive.

“We found it, Kurt. Brittany found the brooch. We’re going to break the curse,” Blaine whispers in his ear and Kurt pulls back to stare at him, his mouth dropping open in shock. Blaine grins one of his enormous, gorgeous grins, and then proves that it is possible to kiss someone senseless.

\--

“Brittany is kind of an odd duck,” Blaine warns Kurt, and Kurt finds that to be a pretty accurate description. She’s beautiful and bubbly and ridiculously optimistic in a not at all tied to reality kind of way.  
Santana is smitten.

Kurt has never seen his friend like this, and hopes that it leads to nothing but good things. Santana has already given up enough things in her life for him over the last two years, and deserves every happiness.

“I performed every poltergeist cleansing ritual I could find, but it’s kind of hard to know for sure without you here,” Santana tells him as they finish their greetings.

Kurt looks around the apartment, reveling in the silence. As great as it was to see his dad again, the constant onslaught of needy spirits had been draining on his limited reserves.

“I don’t see him. He’s not in his usual corner.” He takes a minute to walk through every section of their tiny apartment. “I don’t feel him either. I think it worked.” He beams at Santana, who gives him a relieved grin in return.

“Brittany, I can’t believe you found the brooch. You’re amazing! How did you manage to track it down?”

The blonde smiles beatifically back at him. “It was really Lord Tubbington who did the work. He sent the description out in his chat rooms, and we got word back almost immediately. “

Kurt turns to Blaine in confusion. “Her cat,” Blaine clarifies. Kurt blinks at him for a moment before moving on with a shake of his head.

“Ok, so what do we have to do?”

It’s not that complicated. Santana has already drawn a symbol on the floor for Kurt to stand in.

“You’re going to stand in the circle and hold the brooch. I’ll say the spell and you just repeat it, and at the end prick your finger hard enough to draw blood. Then we melt down the broach in this bowl. I’ve already collected all the ingredients, though we will need to add a few more drops of your blood.”

That explains the blow torch and welding mask on the table.

Kurt is so afraid to let himself believe, but with three people all smiling happily at him it’s hard not to.

“I think I’m ready,” he says after a moment.

“Wait! I just want to…” Blaine presses a quick kiss to Kurt’s mouth. “For luck.”

Kurt picks up the cursed brooch off the table. It’s reappeared in his nightmares so many times, but he never thought he would actually be holding it in his hands again. He stands on the spelled circle and nods to Santana to begin. She says the first word and he opens his mouth to repeat it -

And is suddenly flying backwards. He crashes into their end table and hits the floor hard. He feels hands around his throat, cutting off his air even as a solid form appears above him, a swirl of black energy turning into a man with blond hair and solid black eyes.

He can hear Santana and Blaine yelling, and then Blaine is kneeling by his side in a panic. He tries to pull Kurt towards him but the ghost has him pinned to the floor. Santana is standing near his feet, yelling words in what seems to be many different languages.

Black dots start to form in Kurt’s vision as he tries desperately to pull in some air - which is suddenly rushing back into his lungs. Daniel screams in fury as he turns back into the roiling black energy. It lifts away from Kurt, and seems to get sucked into a shining glass globe that Brittany is holding out towards it.

The globe turns black for a few seconds, and shivers in Brittany’s hands, before brightening again to the original glowing white. She calmly takes it over to the kitchen sink and throws it in as hard as she can. The globe shatters, and their kitchen is once again covered in glass shards.

Blaine helps Kurt sit up, and pulls him back against his chest so he can get his arms around Kurt. Santana sinks to her knees by their side, breathing hard. All three of them just stare at Brittany in shock.

“What?” She asks when she notices them staring. “It’s a one-time use orb.”

“How did you -,” Santana is the first to recover enough to talk. “What just happened?”

“Well, you mentioned that there was an evil spirit here that you were having trouble with, so I picked that thing up on my way just in case.” Brittany shrugs as though it’s no more noteworthy than stopping to get milk.

Santana looks absolutely gobsmacked and Kurt is still catching his breath, but they both nod in agreement when Blaine states simply, “Thank you, Brittany. That was pretty damn awesome.”

\--

After that, breaking the curse is rather anticlimactic. Kurt has to whisper the words through his sore throat, and it takes quite a while to melt the brooch, even with the blowtorch, but suddenly it’s done.

Despite Santana’s cajoling he freezes when it comes time to test it, and just grips Blaine’s hand tightly, staring at the door. Santana simply mutters a few insults and strides over, flinging their front door wide open.

Kurt holds his breath. Nothing happens.

He stares at the door, waiting, waiting, and then, voice hitching, says, “They’re gone.” And immediately breaks down sobbing.

There’s a kiss on his head from Santana, and then Blaine is leading him to his room, where they lay down on Kurt’s bed and just hold each other. Blaine never gets as noisy as Kurt, but there are definitely tears running down his cheeks as well, as he presses kisses to Kurt’s forehead and murmurs words of comfort. Kurt clings to Blaine’s shirt and doesn’t even try to stop his own tears, just cries and cries until he falls into a restful sleep that’s been a long time coming.

\--

When Kurt wakes up again night has fallen. His curtains are open and ambient city light is coming through the window, enough that Kurt can make out Blaine’s face.

Blaine’s eyes are open and he seems to be studying Kurt’s face. He gives a small smile when he sees that Kurt’s awake, but it dissolves into a tearful grimace moments later.

“Blaine?” Kurt asks worriedly. Did something happen when he was sleeping?

“You’re free now, Kurt. I’m so happy for you, you can finally do all of the things you’ve been dreaming about,” Blaine says, his voice thick.

“Why are you crying?” Kurt brings up his hand to lay it on Blaine’s cheek, stroking his thumb soothingly along his cheekbone.

Blaine breathes hard a few times. “Because I’m scared. Now you can go out and do everything, and you’ll be amazing and meet so many fabulous people… when you have all these new choices, why would you still choose me?”

Kurt cradles Blaine’s head to his chest, and lays kisses to his hair. This is one of the moments in his life that he can use to avoid becoming like the people who turn into the restless spirits he never wants to be. He needs to make sure Blaine knows how much he loves him.

“Blaine, sweetheart, I would choose you in any lifetime. Part of what’s been hurting me so much the last few weeks is knowing how perfect you are for me, and being afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to keep you. It would have been difficult to lose any boyfriend, sure, but to know that I’d met the man of my dreams, that you were right here, within reach but that my damn curse might drive us apart, that was killing me.”

“Never, I would never leave you,” Blaine whispers urgently as he surges up to kiss Kurt. “My grandmother was right, you are definitely the best choice I’ve ever made.” After that their reassurances are decidedly less vocal for quite a while.

Kurt knows he still has more to say, and he doesn’t want to wait too long, because you rarely know when will be your last opportunity, but there’s more to showing someone you love them than words, and right now they’re both getting their messages across quite clearly.

**Author's Note:**

> When I initially signed up I had two story ideas I was trying to decide between. The problem is that both of them were more Klaine stories than Kurt stories. Then one day I was listening to a Lord Huron song and the lyrics "I'm just a man/ and I know that I'm damned/ All the dead seem to know where I am" came on, and the plot of this just popped into my head. It was originally going to be a little more light hearted, and I was going to use the rest of the Glee kids as ghosts who wanted Kurt to help them with one more thing before they moved on (for instance Rachel wanted to sing on a Broadway stage). Then I tried to hash out the rules of how Kurt could interact with the ghosts and what each character might want and I scrapped it. So I hope it all worked out for the best.


End file.
